Re: Colloquial language [Re: Last Call: <draft-hoffman-tao4677bis-15.txt> (The Tao of IETF: A Novice's Guide to the Internet Engineering Task Force) to Informational RFC]

mrex@sap.com (Martin Rex) Thu, 31 May 2012 19:39 UTC

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Subject: Re: Colloquial language [Re: Last Call: <draft-hoffman-tao4677bis-15.txt> (The Tao of IETF: A Novice's Guide to the Internet Engineering Task Force) to Informational RFC]
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To: Stephen Farrell <stephen.farrell@cs.tcd.ie>
Date: Thu, 31 May 2012 21:39:44 +0200
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From: mrex@sap.com
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Stephen Farrell wrote:
> 
> I'm with Brian and Yoav on this. I don't see a need
> to change here. And I do think we might lose something
> if we become too PC. If a bunch of non-native speakers
> did say "yes, I found that made the document less
> useful" then I'd be more convinced that all these
> changes were worth it.

+1

I do not believe that *over*simplyfying the language is beneficial for
a clearly non-technical document.  Using a language that is similar
to discussion on mailing lists should be perfectly OK, as long as
the colloquial expressions can still be googled easily, for those
not familiar with them.  I have to google Dilberts and xkcd every once
in a while, an those sometimes contain very "local" expressions that
are really difficult to find -- and still I'm OK with this.

-Martin